“The men who hire me keep order in their worlds. Each one of them rules their own empire. If something breaks free of their rule, chaos can result. In the worlds those men rule, if they keep control, it is very rare there’s collateral damage. But someone steals from them, someone conspires to overthrow them, hell can break loose. And when those fires burn, baby, they take out anyone in their path.”
Weirdly, this made sense so I said, “Okay.”
“When chaos can result, they call me in. I rein it in but I don’t extinguish the threat. I’m not a moron. I know when I deliver a man who f**ked one of these guys over they don’t sit him down in group counseling and work out their issues. But I don’t give a f**k. I control chaos. No wife or mother or kid or girlfriend or just a person on the street who was in the wrong place at the wrong time gets pulled in to make a point, carry out a threat or used as shield, then I did my job and got paid huge to do it.”
This made sense, too, and was kind of honorable in a twisted, criminal underworld kind of way.
I did not tell Raiden this. I just stared at him.
So he continued.
“That’s my work, and the way you’re lookin’ at me I see it hasn’t penetrated yet that in the natural order of things it’s good work. I got a code. I don’t hunt women no matter what shit they pull—and they can pull some serious shit—but that is not my gig and never will be. And if the man I’m huntin’ is twenty or younger, I don’t take the job. At that age, they can pull their shit outta that life, turn themselves around. I don’t ask questions. I don’t counsel my prey. I tag and deliver. The kid might be pullin’ shit, but I won’t know that and I won’t live with it on my conscious that he’s off tryin’ to find a better life and I was responsible for dragging him back in.”
Raiden went quiet.
“Is that it?” I asked, thinking that was at least something but not much of a code.
“Nope,” he answered. “I don’t do side jobs, deliverin’ shit if they know I’m headin’ somewhere, which would usually be dope or firearms, but it could be anything. I do not touch any of their business because no matter what it is it’s tainted, and that is not part of my life. I am not muscle. I gotta get physical on the capture, I do that. But I don’t inflict injury unless it’s unavoidable. I am contract only and not on any payroll. It is known wide I’m not looking for employment. Now they don’t even offer no matter how good I do what I do and they want me on their crew. As for what my crew and I do, we do one thing. The job and only the job. There is not a menu of services available. We don’t accept add-ons no matter the amount they’re willing to pay. And unless I trust a man—and there are few I trust outside my crew, Deacon and Knight—I don’t grant favors and I don’t ask for them.”
Raiden again stopped speaking.
I said nothing.
So he asked, “You got any questions?”
I shook my head but told him, “I think I need to process this.”
He studied me a moment before his eyes warmed, his voice dropped and he ordered, “Then come here and process it closer.”
My throat clogged. I shook my head, but swallowed and forced out, “I think this is the kind of processing you need to process alone.”
A look that was hard to witness moved over his face.
He understood me.
That killed too.
“Hanna, come here,” he whispered.
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
Why not?
“Raiden, you just told me you’re a criminal and I’m not sure I’m down with that or if I’ll ever be.”
And I wasn’t.
And that’s why this was killing me.
“I’m not a criminal.”
“You participate in criminal activities,” I pointed out. “With understanding and intent.”
“I do shit that’s considered illegal,” he amended.
“It isn’t considered illegal, Raiden. It just is,” I told him.
“And who do I hurt?” he shot back, and my mouth clamped shut because that was actually a good question. “Who do I hurt, Hanna?” he pushed.
I said nothing.
What I did was push back into the couch when Raiden leaned toward me, putting his elbows to his thighs and kept talking.
“I don’t push dope. I don’t run guns. I don’t pimp women. I don’t steal. I don’t con. I don’t blackmail. I don’t squeeze people for protection money. I do not act as an enforcer. My business never touches the lives of honest citizens. The people I deal with made their choices, the wrong ones, and I’m a consequence of those choices. I didn’t force their choices. I do not do one f**kin’ thing that contributes to their business or the shit they do. They f**k up and wander into the real world where there’s a possibility that they can make decisions that will put good people doin’ their best to live decent lives in jeopardy, I reel them back in so that shit does not happen. I’m not tryin’ to convince you that that shit always bleeds. Sometimes it’s contained, but there’s always the possibility that someone could get tweaked, panicked, do something entirely f**ked up where someone innocent pays, and what I do stops that before it could even start.”
He was scaring me. All of this was, but still, I found the courage to note, “Raiden, it’s clear you’re determined to do what you do and you have your reasons, but, honestly some of it sounds like rationalizations.”
“Yeah?” he asked. “You stopped Bodhi and Heather from f**kin’ you up the ass. You let that play out, I would have stopped those shipments from goin’ out with your afghans and I would have eventually traced all that shit back to the man who’s instigating it. Now he’s gonna find another Bodhi and Heather who will likely find another Hanna Boudreaux they can f**k up the ass and she might not be as lucky as you.”
Oh my God.
That totally made sense.
“People do a lot of shit,” Raiden told me. “You’re so insulated by family, friends and Willow, thank Christ, you’ll never know all the seriously jacked up shit people can get up to. And I didn’t tell you that about Bodhi and Heather to make you think I’m on a crusade to shut down drug dealers or any kinds of other scum. The men I work for, I don’t make judgments and I don’t get involved. But when shit bleeds and I staunch the flow, that jacks up job satisfaction and it does it huge. You want it straight up, odds are Bodhi and Heather were good people who got caught up in something they couldn’t control. They were squeezed. They were forced to make a choice. I don’t know what happened and I don’t give a f**k, but I’ve seen a lot of people, and those two do not have black souls. But they jacked up somewhere along the way, felt the consequences and that’s fair. What isn’t fair is they roped you into that shit and I don’t get to feel good about disentangling people like you often. It happens enough that I like what I do enough to keep doin’ it until I have the money to quit doin’ it, kick back and have a decent life where I answer to no one and I can just breathe.”